


Nine of Swords

by FireflyPie



Category: Original Work
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Betrayal, Bodyguard, Gen, Magic, Nobility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 09:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19867609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflyPie/pseuds/FireflyPie
Summary: A noble man, a lovely lady, and a mere servant attend a private dinner through the night, all with different motives. Needless to say, there will be magic, bloodshed, and betrayal before the night ends. The stage has been set, the cards have aligned; let the play begin!





	Nine of Swords

The Sterling Iris, with its silent waiters serving decadent morsels of food and its halls of scented velvet, was an establishment seemingly wholly separate from the outside world. Walking through the dim corridors, one would be able to observe silk coats and glittering gems of every color on the aloof patrons who came there to dine. Weaving in and out of the soft clinking of silver cutlery… if one listened closely… husky whispers of conversation slithered amongst them.

Nestled in an alcove only lit by a single candle that flickered between deep crimson and topaz orange, a man and a woman sat in a rich silence.

Torian stood patiently, facing the table, opposite the dark hallway from the alcove. 8 other men and women stood - all with the same neutral, slightly bored look that Torian wore - in richly dyed uniforms of black and jade green, their hands clasped behind their backs. He could hear and see everything the dining couple said and did. That was his job, after all.

The man chuckled deeply at something the woman said, raising a pale, straw-colored wine to his lips. He was not a subdued person in any sense of the word, but today he lounged and dined in a muted black and white suit as if he had been doing it since birth. A vividly green emerald brooch provided a tasteful splash of color to the outfit. He donned the mask all nobility wore masterfully, for one so young.

_ The woman, on the other hand…  _ Torian shifted his gaze, ever-so-slightly, to her. The candle flickered a deep red as she spoke, casting a light that caused her ruby jewelry to sparkle. The woman caressed her cinnamon-brown hair almost habitually.

“... so professional. Almost  _ regal _ ,” she was murmuring, leaning forward and causing her layered indigo dress to rustle. The woman’s half-lidded gaze was dancing.

“My family only raises the  _ best. _ I don’t suppose you own one like mine?” he answered coyly. Naturally, in one fluid motion, he snapped his fingers. “Torian! Show her what you can do.”

Without missing a beat, Torian stepped into the dim orange light. He bowed deeply to both of them, intoning, “My lord Hartmont. My lady Cranscing.”

Like clockwork, Torian held out a gloved hand just above the table, which was set with two plates of half-eaten roast quail and, of course, a vase holding one of the ubiquitous white irises. He quivered imperceptibly as energy hummed through his body.

Lady Cranscing gasped in delight as the napkins in their laps shook themselves and, unfurling their crisp white corners, flapped like birds around the alcove. “What a useful little thing!” she tittered. “This one looks exotic. Wherever did you find him?”

Lord Hartmont opened his mouth and glanced at Torian. Lady Cranscing was right; the set of his eyes and the curve of his nose were not exactly notable, but to the well-trained eye of a noblewoman, Torian was definitely different. His black gloves and gold-trimmed robes marked him as a servant of a higher class than the average attendant, which honestly didn’t help him stay incognito, but most importantly of all, Torian carried the weight of house Hartmont’s power on his shoulders.

“Why, I plucked him off a tree a few countries over,” he quipped. “Poor savages don’t even wear clothes over there, did you know?”

Torian smiled pleasantly as they covered their mouths and laughed.

And he stood there until Lady Cranscing recovered herself and faintly said, “You may excuse yourself from our presence.”

Noting the minute flicker of dislike in Lord Hartmont’s eyes at her words, Torian bowed deeply and retreated into the shadows. A whisper of perfumed air, and it was as if he was never there in the first place.

The Lord and Lady conversed late into the night; even after the last crumb of dessert was swallowed, even after the other patrons got up to leave (eager to shed their heavy finery and makeup), Lord Hartmont’s nine attendants stood like statues adorning the Sterling Iris. Their frozen gazes could only watch the enchanted candlelight, never consuming the wick - never growing closer to the polished golden stand.

Torian spared a glance outside the towering crystal windows - the full moon was approaching its rest in the west.

Stepping forward, Torian bowed deeply in apology for his action, ignoring the surprised looks on the couple’s faces. Servants usually only acted when the master gave orders. “I beg your pardon, Lord Hartmont, but the hour is late.”

“Ah. Thank you, Torian.” Lord Hartmont blinked a few times, as if a spell had been broken, and rose from his velvet seat. “Mirri, do forgive my rudeness. I’ll make it up to you - tea by the lake tomorrow, perhaps?”

Lady Cranscing stood with a clatter, so abrupt that Torian instinctively reached for the magic. “Kristoph!” she pouted, blood-red light reflecting off her blue eyes. “You  _ can’t go.  _ What will become of a virtuous lady such as myself if she’s made to walk home alone?”

Lord Hartmont’s brow furrowed for the slightest of seconds, but it quickly gave way to complaisance. “Alright. Take half my guard while I go arrange for a carriage for you with the owners here. I don’t want you to feel unsafe, Mirri.”

Lady Cranscing’s lips curved in a satisfied smile as she watched the 5 of them - Lord Hartmont, Torian, and three attendants - leave the room.

“You’ve had far too much to drink today,” Torian commented sarcastically as soon as they were out of earshot of the Lady. “Leaving your guards behind?”

“What can I say? The drink here’s great!” Kristoph joked. “The beautiful lady didn’t hurt either.”

“Hm. You are already 19. About time to start thinking of a proper marriage alliance to strike - a powerful chip to play that can gain you-”

Kristoph raised his hands, mimicking a mouth moving, cutting Torian off. “The tutor already bored me to death talking about marriages! You can stop sounding like my father now.”

“I would never dare,” Torian said innocently. Kristoph shot Torian a mock-glare, and they both laughed.

“Truly. I’m sorry about showing you off for parlor tricks… therefore, you can stop being so uptight now. You know it’s not actually like  _ that _ .”

“You mean, such as things are with every servant-slave in Impyria?” Torian kept his steady gaze forward, but his hands clasped tighter behind his back. “We must always play by the rules. Never forget that… Kristoph Hartmont.”

Kristoph scratched his head awkwardly, letting the silence fall between two old friends like a curtain. The other attendants pressed on as if they hadn’t heard.

They had only walked for a few minutes through the opulent halls when a shriek shattered the silence. Torian and Kristoph shared an ominous glance and bolted back toward Lady Cranscing, attendants drawing their swords and following closely.

Waiters exclaimed and cutlery fell to the floor as the armed retinue pushed their way through the Sterling Iris. More and more people began to run into them as they were fleeing the very room the Hartmont group was running toward. When finally they burst through the polished doors, a loud, panicked cry rang out:

“Help me! Oh gods, somebody help me!”

The dinnerware was shattered, the table completely overturned. Torian, displeased, scanned the 5 Hartmont guards laying in various states of consciousness around the room and immediately stepped in front of Kristoph.

Kristoph, on the other hand, only had eyes for the strange man at the opposite end of the hall: he was portly, and dressed as a gentleman, but in no way delicate; with one gloved hand, he was holding Lady Cranscing to the wall by her throat.

“Do you fear the wrath of House Hartmont, sir?!” Kristoph roared as the strange man whipped around to face the newcomers. “Put her down and leave! Now!”

“Kristoph,  _ collect yourself _ . This man dresses well, but does not carry himself like a gentleman,” Torian warned.

“Your slave is right, noble boy. I almost feel sorry for having to put him down,” the stranger declared, his voice like oil slipping through his cracked teeth. Before anybody could react, he lifted two fingers to his mouth and whistled, a shrill wolf’s howl.

Bursting through the splintering crystal window panes came a flood of masked rogues, their flying blades gleaming like ice in the revealed moonlight. Above - ahead - behind - in just a matter of seconds, they were surrounded. Torian could barely hear the very orders that he gave to the Hartmont guard over the din of shattering glass and cacophonous battlecries.

“Stay with me!” he commanded, tugging Kristoph behind the upturned table and thrusting his hands to both sides of the melee. His gloves flickered with an ethereal light as Torian began muttering hasty incantations.

“Get him! Get the spellcaster!” came an angry shout from somewhere across the room, but Torian’s vision was quickly filled with black and green cloth as the rest of the guard moved to create a ramshackle barricade of chairs and side tables on both directions of the hallway.  _ Thwf! Thwf! Thwf!  _ Arrows flew in from all directions. Sometimes they harmlessly buried themselves in the floral wallpaper; sometimes they sunk into cloth and flesh. But the Hartmont guard fought back with equal ferocity.

Torian let out a strangled cry as a dart - gods, he hadn’t even seen where that had come from - punctured his forearm. His uniform grew blacker and blacker as it stained with blood. But finally, finally, his spell was ready. All he needed to do was to pull the trigger-!

Like an earthquake was rocking the room, every shard of crystal lying on the ground began to vibrate and hum - sparkling and shimmering violently like pearls struck by lightning, the shards flew towards Torian at breakneck speed. Most of them impaled a rogue or two with deadly force. The rest dropped to the ground harmlessly as soon as they reached the barricade, the magic bringing them to life released.

“Torian, where’s Lady Cranscing?” Kristoph asked, low and urgent, from his position behind the dining table.

“I’m not quite sure - augh, we’re in a bit of a bind currently, Kristoph, and you come before her,” Torian replied distractedly, ducking behind a splintered plank of wood. “Duty first!”

“Just tell me where she is, if you can see her!”

Torian bit his lip. He glanced around the increasingly chaotic room. Then he clenched the fist on his good arm, sparks of light from his palm flickering off his spectacles, and whispered something to an armored Hartmont guard to his right, who nodded expectantly.

“Right…” Torian dove under the barricade to his left, right palm searing with barely-contained magic, and before the people around him could shield their eyes from the light, a dense beam of lightning arced its way from his palm all the way down the corridor. As masked rogues staggered in pain, the armored guard kicked the barricade through and cut her way through the enemy with ease. Torian struggled to his feet, panting, and followed after her.

As the waves of dark cloth and leather parted for the Hartmont guards’ steel and magic, Torian saw - rising above all, lifted by sorcery - the sumptuous indigo figure of Mirri Cranscing, like a dark flag. A chill ran through him as she smiled a crimson smile and brought a finger to her lips, as if to hush a baby.

A ripple coursed through the very being of the hallway. Torian could feel it, just as he would have felt an ocean’s wave crashing over him.

And everybody, everything, all at once, grew still.

Lady Cranscing dropped to the floor, smirked, and stepped over numerous bodies with an unfazed gait. She had just made her way, unperturbed, to the threshold of the barricade when a strained voice called out to her.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Lady Cranscing whipped around, disheveled brown hair flying. Even from across the room, Torian could see the stormy hatred etched into her face. Disbelief melted that expression as soon as they locked eyes.

“What… what  _ are _ you?!” she breathed.

“Hah… “ Torian grunted. He was feeling the repercussions of ignoring his wound from earlier. “I am simply an exotic savage that Kristoph plucked off a tree a few countries over. Were you not listening?”

“Cease whatever you are doing this instant!” Lady Cranscing shot back, frustrated now. She thrust her hands up toward him.

Torian chuckled. “Are you attempting to threaten me? You know it’s impossible to maintain this spell and another at once.”

She shrugged, pulled a dagger from a thigh scabbard and brandished it, the cold steel as bright as silver in the moonlight. “I wasn’t expecting House Hartmont to keep servants as good as this. You’re too powerful to leave alive,” she commented as she stalked straight for Torian, locking eyes with him. “Perhaps I would have taken you for myself. But… everybody knows Hartmonts raise their servants to be loyal as dogs. What a waste.”

“A waste, I’m sure, like the cheap sellswords you hired to play the  _ enemy _ .” Torian realized he was clutching his injured arm, squeezing it tight as blood dripped to the floor. This was not good. “Why even have them pretend? This, all of it, is pointless if you could have just used magic to kill my Lord.”

Lady Cranscing was close now, but he didn’t have to look at her face to hear the smile in her voice. “You’re a smart little thing, Torian,” she remarked, pronouncing his name for the first time that night. “You knew House Cranscing was burnt to the ground decades ago, I could tell. And yet you allowed your precious master to dine with me.”

“I suppose that wasn’t so smart,” Torian agreed. “But I don’t merely serve my Lord… I serve house Hartmont, and the rise of another house would be… unwelcome. So tell me: why would the remnant of a house as pitifully inferior as Cranscing stage an ambush on one of the most powerful scions in Impyria?”

The Lady winced as Torian said “inferior”, and he chuckled darkly as the storm clouds of anger began to return to her face. “You know nothing, savage!” she hissed. “That’s right - I’m nobody. But if I could return to Novarask as the savior of one of the most  _ feared _ ,  _ powerful _ noble families in the capital, then everybody would know my name.” She lifted her chin, trembling in unreconciled fury. “Recognition is my right. It flows through my veins! And you cannot stop me. ”

Torian stumbled to the floor in pain, staining the carpet dark burgundy with blood. Lady Cranscing wouldn’t need to try very hard to slit his throat by now. But, to her surprise, he drew his gaze up to hers and smiled. She halted where she stood, even though she knew he couldn’t cast while the spell was active.

“Apologies, my Lady, but if you really were truly noble… you wouldn’t let your emotions get the best of you.”

A shiver ran through reality, and the hallway suddenly burst back into vivid life. The spell’s duration had run out! Torian flattened himself against the floor to dodge incoming swords and arms. But Lady Cranscing, who had paused in confusion, immediately found herself on the receiving end of a swinging blade. She crumpled to the ground like an indigo napkin.

Torian shivered in pain and adrenaline, gasping as her spell’s effects left the room for good. It was like finally filling his lungs with air after being immersed in deep water.

Dawn rose in gentle blushes of pink and orange. It had taken hours for the chaos to die down, for the bloodied and exhausted Hartmont guards to clean up the bodies that littered the hall, and for Kristoph to finally come to grips with the past night’s events. He’d previously been as placid as the sky, but the realization came to him all at once and felt like freezing water drenching his skin.

Shattered crystal crunched under his feet as he approached Torian, who was attending to his injury with a painful look on his face. A soft, shimmering light enveloped the wound as Torian continuously whispered healing incantations.

“I feel like I’ve just woken from a nightmare,” Kristoph muttered after a long while, holding his head.

“Worse has happened,” Torian remarked calmly, pausing.

“Of course you’d say that. I never thought… no, I wasn’t thinking… great Phoenix, how?! And why?! What had I ever done to her?”

“Don’t blame yourself.” Torian looked away. “I took a risk - “

“You  _ knew _ !” Kristoph exclaimed, incredulous. His sudden outburst coldly echoed through the ruined halls.

Torian kneeled before Kristoph, his expression unreadable. “Of the Great Noble Houses of Impyria, there were once not 5 but 6. House Cranscing was one of these Houses. All we know is that overnight, every trace of it disappeared. Manors burned. Servants killed. Any mention of it wiped from the annals of history. That night, it was erased, and so too it was slowly forgotten by the people.”

Kristoph stepped closer. His shadow fell over Torian’s shoulders and his voice was deadly quiet as he said, “And then a Cranscing appears in the heart of Novarask. Explain.”

“I cannot tell you how we obtained this information, and what we know is surprisingly little, I fear. But we did know that Mirri Cranscing was a rat hiding in its den, so to speak, and to kill it we would have to lure it out.”

Kristoph raised his eyebrows, the implications of Torian’s words sinking in. They had known each other for a long time; there was no point in debating this. Here and now, Kristoph and Torian were both the pawns.

Kristoph turned toward the window, away from Torian, and sighed. “Worse has happened,” he echoed. “But that doesn’t mean it ever gets any better.”

Torian was about to reply when a servant of the Sterling Iris ran up to Kristoph and hurriedly whispered in his ear.

“Come on,” Kristoph said. “Let’s go.”


End file.
